State authorities have charged a Florida man with impersonating a New Jersey doctor and filing more than $1 million in insurance claims from a "phantom medical practice" that didn't exist.
Yoandi Marrero, 33, was indicted Wednesday on charges he used the personal information of a Hudson County family physician to make bogus claims for services such as x-rays and ultrasounds to the United Healthcare Insurance Company.
Yoandi Marrero, 33, of Hialeah, Florida.
According to the state Office of the Insurance Fraud Prosecutor, Marrero claimed to provide physical therapy and medical services to more than a dozen patients at the PA Clinical Center, the company he registered with a listed address on Bloomfield Avenue in Denville.
Authorities said he received about $46,000 in payments before he was busted when a real patient noticed her insurance company was billed for treatments she never received.
Investigators traced the claim to the state Treasury, where Marrero had registered the company, prosecutors said.
The listed address for PA Clinical Center, authorities learned, was actually an empty storage unit.
Marrero, of Hialeah, Florida, could not be reached for comment and a spokesperson said the prosecutor's office had not been notified whether Marrero had hired an attorney.
"Nothing about these claims for medical services was legitimate; not the doctor who allegedly performed them; not the patients who allegedly received them, not even the facility in which they were allegedly performed," acting state Insurance Fraud Prosecutor Tracy Thompson said in a statement, adding her office would "vigorously investigate these phantom claims all the way back to their illegal sources."
Marrero faces charges of insurance fraud, theft by deception and identity theft, which could carry as much as 10 years in state prison.
S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.